Shifting Images in Politics

Abstract

During the 1988 presidential campaign¹ the American people sat and listened. At first many of us were pro-Dukakis, admiring his independence, his intelligence, his egalitarian marriage, his substance. Bush seemed boring and a “wimp,” his marriage from another era. Sheehy’ s (1988) analysis, in Character, of Bush as a hopeless follower and a sycophant of Reagan’s seemed apt. Then, slowly, over the course of several months, Bush looked better and better. He emerged from under the domination of Reagan. He shed that “deferential Episcopalian tilt” as one friend called the self-effacing manner he had assumed as vice president (Dowd, 1989b, p. 1). And he was a quiet man. He listened. He was from the eastern upper class but could stop and talk to a woman on the campaign trail about her particular concerns. He seemed to care, and more importantly appeared responsive.²